My team crashed the Security Node Options

[Murrdox]

In our last playing session, our team broke into a Triad run "prison" for Awakened that certain allied corporations wanted information extracted from.

In the process of breaking into the prison, the group used an Agent to hack the node, unlock a security door. After doing that, the system was on Active Alert, so the team had the Agent crash the node. Due to extremely poor rolling on my part, and very good rolling on the Agent's part, the Agent succeeded in doing this. So, the Node is now rebooting.

That's where we ended our session. We're stating our next session tomorrow.

I just realized that all the Mag-Lock doors in the facility are operated on the Node. So, I'm not quite sure what to do with them. I thought I'd get some input.

Option 1 - Until the Node is rebooted, all doors are locked. Trying to use the RFID tags to open the door just results in an "Error" tone from the door.

Option 2 - Until the Node is rebooted, all doors (except the cell doors which would be on a failsafe) are UNlocked.

Option 3 - ?

Option 1 I feel is pretty realistic, except that it locks all personnel INSIDE the prison if the node crashes. This seems to be sort of a glaring flaw in case of an emergency. Would this be how doors like this would realistically be programmed?

Option 2 throws the characters a bit of a reward for managing to crash the node. The cell doors still would be locked however.

When giving suggestions, keep in mind this isn't a sprawling high-tech prison. It's a small facility in a sub-basement consisting of 2 floors, a security checkpoint, 4 cells, 5-6 armed guards on duty at all times, and 2 wizards. It's run and operated by the Yellow Lotus triad.

[Jhaiisiin]

I'd say that all doors remain in their current state, whether locked or unlocked. With the node being down, security badges can't validate and thus the locks no longer work.

That said, a prison without a redundant backup system or on-site hacker to bring things back up would be rather unusual in my opinion.

[deek]

I'd agree, that all doors would remain in their current state.

Now, if you could gain access to the maglock (either wired or wireless access) then you could just use the Spoof program, assuming you have the AccessID of the security node, to just unlock/lock doors during the reboot process. You wouldn't have much time, but if you kind of planned for the reboot, then you are set.

[Tiger Eyes]

I personally like the option that all doors lock and will not unlock until the node reboots (which may require an onsite security hacker to do something). But that's simply because I find it amusing to have shadowrunners stuck in a room going, "the door's locked! Now what do we do!" And yes, my team has done this and discovered how many shots it takes from a shotgun to blow a hole in a wall. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

I'd also say that the magical personnel should be very aware that the node has crashed... and that in crashing the node, an alert was sent out to the Triad, so they're now aware as well. Nothing like sticking your runners in a locked down facility with a Triad backup team on the way and two pissed off security mages... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Backgammon]

Well, real buildings unlock all electronically locked doors if something goes wrong. The idea being, if there's a fire or something, you have to let people out.

That being said, this is a Triad building. They don't care about regulations.

One thing you can could consider is that with the node down, there is simply no centralized way to open the doors. The doors must rely on their built-in local verification systems. They are unable to query the central database, but they may have a local one. Of great advantage to the runners would be for the doors to be unable to ring a central alert. If you fuck them up, no one will know. But you still need to fuck them up

[hobgoblin]

I would say anything goes. The locks are probably built to have defaults to either open or closed (power goes down or fire alarm goes off, default to unlocked and so on), depending on what happens, and probably could hold a small set of internal tags it will approve if cut from the main.

[deek]

Yeah, it really boils down to what the GM decides the prison was set up to do. You could go either way...

[Murrdox]

Well, real buildings unlock all electronically locked doors if something goes wrong. The idea being, if there's a fire or something, you have to let people out.

That being said, this is a Triad building. They don't care about regulations.

One thing you can could consider is that with the node down, there is simply no centralized way to open the doors. The doors must rely on their built-in local verification systems. They are unable to query the central database, but they may have a local one. Of great advantage to the runners would be for the doors to be unable to ring a central alert. If you fuck them up, no one will know. But you still need to fuck them up

So far I think I really like this option. Having the doors be completely offline doesn't make sense to me from a technical prospective.

So I could allow the runners to hack the doors individually. The runners would need to open the panel on the door and get at the electronics. Once connected, they could spoof a command to the door to open via a default Administrator code.

In order to get access to the door, I'd probably treat each individual door as it's own separate node with a simple rating of "2" across the board. Since the doors are usually slaved to main security node there's really no reason to have any hefty-duty security on them. You could either hack yourself an Administrator account on door and command it to open, or just hack in with a regular user account and use Spoof to try and spoof an administrator request to open the door.

Sound reasonable?

[Dumori]

If the open to a RDFI tag then all you need is to send a open comand to the door and assuming that if it cant check the sever it will open vola.

[kzt]

Well, real buildings unlock all electronically locked doors if something goes wrong. The idea being, if there's a fire or something, you have to let people out.

No, there is a connection from the fire alarm system to the floor/site controller that unlocks the doors. When the controller fries nothing unlocks. You can pull the fire alarm and nothing will happen unless there is a backup link to the actual door controller or door power supply.

In the real world I've had to have guys cut holes in walls to get to the maglock power supplies. We had a power hit, the UPS kept the server farm up but the 10 ton AC unit dropped off-line. When the room hit somewhere past 120 degrees it cooked the site controller. Eventually the network gear went into defensive shutdown and the site dropped off-line and pagers went off. We ended up having three maintenance guys with wrecking and pry bars pop the front door maglock, but the data center door was made of sterner stuff.

They used a sawzall to cut open an access hole in the wall and then popped the maglock power supply feed through the access hole while standing on a ladder. Pretty clean job all things considered. Did I mention that the room was over 140f when they cut the wall open?

On our system if you just lose connection to the central authentication server the floor/site controller still works and it will unlock the doors for people who it has in its local memory as authorized users. But if you haven't done something recently (typically about week - though it boots up with no users) that causes the controller to have you cached it will deny access until it gets a response.

[Murrdox]

No, there is a connection from the fire alarm system to the floor/site controller that unlocks the doors. When the controller fries nothing unlocks. You can pull the fire alarm and nothing will happen unless there is a backup link to the actual door controller or door power supply.

In the real world I've had to have guys cut holes in walls to get to the maglock power supplies. We had a power hit, the UPS kept the server farm up but the 10 ton AC unit dropped off-line. When the room hit somewhere past 120 degrees it cooked the site controller. Eventually the network gear went into defensive shutdown and the site dropped off-line and pagers went off. We ended up having three maintenance guys with wrecking and pry bars pop the front door maglock, but the data center door was made of sterner stuff.

They used a sawzall to cut open an access hole in the wall and then popped the maglock power supply feed through the access hole while standing on a ladder. Pretty clean job all things considered. Did I mention that the room was over 140f when they cut the wall open?

On our system if you just lose connection to the central authentication server the floor/site controller still works and it will unlock the doors for people who it has in its local memory as authorized users. But if you haven't done something recently (typically about week - though it boots up with no users) that causes the controller to have you cached it will deny access until it gets a response.

This is fantastic info!! Man, what are the odds I'd actually have someone with real-life security door experience (including what happens when things go awry) respond here!

The Dumpshock community always manages to surprise me when I least expect it.

Thanks so much KZT!

[deek]

No doubt. I was amazed at another thread today when a respondent gave his work-related experience on tunnelling through earth. Simply amazing at times!

[Backgammon]

No, there is a connection from the fire alarm system to the floor/site controller that unlocks the doors. When the controller fries nothing unlocks. You can pull the fire alarm and nothing will happen unless there is a backup link to the actual door controller or door power supply.

In the real world I've had to have guys cut holes in walls to get to the maglock power supplies. We had a power hit, the UPS kept the server farm up but the 10 ton AC unit dropped off-line. When the room hit somewhere past 120 degrees it cooked the site controller. Eventually the network gear went into defensive shutdown and the site dropped off-line and pagers went off. We ended up having three maintenance guys with wrecking and pry bars pop the front door maglock, but the data center door was made of sterner stuff.

They used a sawzall to cut open an access hole in the wall and then popped the maglock power supply feed through the access hole while standing on a ladder. Pretty clean job all things considered. Did I mention that the room was over 140f when they cut the wall open?

On our system if you just lose connection to the central authentication server the floor/site controller still works and it will unlock the doors for people who it has in its local memory as authorized users. But if you haven't done something recently (typically about week - though it boots up with no users) that causes the controller to have you cached it will deny access until it gets a response.

I gotta say that's a pretty awesome story.

[Telion]

Ah perfect time to bring in the following situation enhancing hijinx... err plausible...scenarios:

So now the agents on the crashed node can't regulate the volcano's pressure under the complex and its all going to blow if they don't hurry right?
The Bomb beneath the complex no longer is receiving the reset command. 1 minute till auto destruct.
The lights went out on the blood mage performing the ritual sorcery and he didn't perform it properly. Force 12+ blood spirit rampaging the halls. The mages last words were Clatto Verata N...ot again

Or you could just Cop out and let all the doors open. I'm sure there's lots of bad men in the cells who want to hurt the runners marks and the runners.

[kzt]

All the doors stay locked makes sense, all the doors open makes sense, all the doors including the prison cells open makes a bit less sense for a prison, but they might not have actually installed prison gear.... What is a more interesting and exciting outcome?

Maximum Game Fun is always a useful principle. Bearing in mind that people have more fun when their bullshit detector isn't going off, you don't break their Suspension of Disbelief and the steel rails into the sunset are not visible....

To me the idea that the Triad might really have had a REALLY good reason to lock up some of the Awakened the PCs have just released seems pretty amusing, though it's a dark and nihilistic kind of amusing.

[hobgoblin]

btw, searching wikipedia for magnetic lock may prove informative (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_lock
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_strike

[Cthulhudreams]

Realistically, I'd suggest preserving current state, but there would be manual overrides (in case of fire, press button which also triggers other alarms), and doors would probably feature a local database caching cards from the last day or so in case comms fell over. So cards that had recently used the door wuld keep working, but a 'new' card wouldn't.

[crizh]

Since the doors are usually slaved to main security node there's really no reason to have any hefty-duty security on them.

If they are slaved to the main node then the have no security at all by default. Spoof yourself as the main node and you automagically have admin access to them.

[Jhaiisiin]

Also, it'd be likely that the prisoner doors might be run from a completely separate node, to prevent the possible issue of prisoners going wild from a system issue like this.

[kzt]

Of course, I kind of doubt that the Triad hired an expert in prison design to build their security system.

[Jhaiisiin]

Triads also aren't likely to be overlooking something like this. You don't get to be a powerhouse crime network like them without being able to think ahead.

[Heath Robinson]

I remember hearing that tNAGtRL included something on this - saying that it's stupid to make your door locks reliant on any centralised system because it gives an attacker a single big target. Maglocks should use local information because of the exact situation that the team has created.

From a metagame perspective, it also gives you a reason to bring the Hacker on the actual run if they can't control locks from offsite.

[Larme]

I think the doors stay locked as well. You could spoof them open if they're slaved to the security node, though you'd need the main node's access ID to do that. You could also open them up and open them using Hardware skill, and with the main node offline they wouldn't be able to trigger an alarm if you failed. I'm also pretty sure that maglocks can store the entire authorization database, since it's not much more than text, which is trivial for an SR4 era device. If you had authorized access, I think it would still let you through.

[Heath Robinson]

Larme, I'm actually saying "Option X - doors work like normal". If you didn't mean that then you need to edit out that "as well".

[Jhaiisiin]

Unless hers is a general reply in that she's agreeing with other posters, instead of specifically the person immediately before her post....